Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi is a trustee of the Foundation for Iranian Studies and director of the Dialogue Project. In 2003 the Guardian reported that "Readers who like to keep an eye on such things should watch out for media appearances by any of the following Benador "experts"", they then provided a list of well known neoconservatives that included Azar Nafisi alongside the likes of Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Hillel Fradkin, and Richard Perle. 

She is on the board of trustees of Freedom House.

"Azar Nafisi is a Visiting Fellow and professorial lecturer at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. A professor of aesthetics, culture and literature, Dr. Nafisi held a fellowship at Oxford University teaching and conducting a series of lectures on culture and the important role of Western literature and culture in Iran after the revolution in 1979. She taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabaii before coming to the United States—- earning national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran’s intellectuals, youth, and especially young women. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil in 1981, and did not resume teaching until 1987. She has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture as well as on the human rights of Iranian women and girls and the important role they play in the process of change for pluralism and an open society in Iran and other Muslim societies.

"Dr. Nafisi's writings include Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabakov’s Novels (1994) and chapters in Muslim Women and Politics of Participation (1997), Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran (1992), and Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women, (1999). Her op-eds and articles have been published in The New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, The Baltimore Sun, and The New Republic, and her cover story, “The Veiled Threat: The Iranian Revolution’s Woman Problem”, published in The New Republic (February 22, 1999), has been reprinted into several languages. She is currently teaching on the relation between culture and politics at SAIS. Her new book, the critically-acclaimed bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, was published by Random House in 2003."